


Playing the Part

by MissTangle



Series: Whumptober 2018 [2]
Category: Mission: Impossible (Movies)
Genre: Benji whump, Blood, Gen, Ghost Protocol, I also noticed that I have a very specific way of writing panicked Benji, I don't want to blindside anyone if I can avoid it, I don't want to tag anything else because spoilers, I'm not sure how accurate it is but that's the vibe I get from him, So I'm going with it, Whumptober 2018, let me know if there's anything else I should tag!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-07-24 08:41:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16171565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissTangle/pseuds/MissTangle
Summary: Benji's hands are still bloody. He should probably take care of that. Set towards the end of Ghost Protocol.





	Playing the Part

**Author's Note:**

> I'm back! I cheated today and wrote within established canon. (These prompts work so well with it, though!) Bloody hands really get to me, so when we got that shot in Ghost Protocol... yeah, it messed me up. As such, I wrote about it. It's much shorter than yesterday's, but I get the feeling I'll make up for it later.
> 
> Behold, Whumptober Day 2: Bloody Hands!

On the bright side, they’d prevented nuclear war.

That was the only good thing about any of this that Benji could come up with. He kept reminding himself of it, finding that it was marginally easier to cope with the reality of their situation when he considered that they’d probably just saved the world.

The reality was that Jane and Ethan were now both in the hospital with bad injuries, the Secretary was dead, and Benji was much more shaken by what had almost happened than he cared to admit.

He stood next to Brandt in the hospital waiting room, both of them staring blankly at the opposite wall, not sure what to do next. Should they wait for news on their teammates? Should they go find someplace to stay? In their indecisiveness they simply remained where they were.

Benji replayed the night’s events in his mind for what seemed like the millionth time. He considered every possible mistake he could have made. He considered every mistake he had made. He wondered how they’d gotten lucky enough to pull this off. He wondered what would have happened if they hadn’t been so lucky.

“Benji.” Brandt’s voice startled Benji out of his thoughts. Benji wasn’t sure how long Brandt had been trying to get his attention, but he had a feeling it had been a while. He turned toward his teammate, a little embarrassed.

“Your hands look pretty bad. You alright?”

Benji glanced down at his hands, smeared with his own blood. The relay had left his fingers in sorry shape. He could feel them throbbing now, the pads of his thumbs and index fingers angry at the ordeal they’d been put through. He had to agree with Brandt -- they did look pretty bad.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Benji assured him, only halfway sure of it himself. “I’ll go take care of it.” He drifted off toward the nearest men’s room, noticing how stiff his legs had gotten and wondering just how long he’d been standing there in the same position.

Benji let out a small sigh of relief upon finding the men’s room empty. He made his way over to a sink, turned on the tap, and let the water run over his hands, gritting his teeth against the stinging pain that always comes with cleaning wounds. He squeezed his eyes shut and counted his breaths, waiting for the stinging to stop. His mind returned unbidden to when he’d hurt himself like this, rewiring that damn relay as fast as he could, pushing on through the pain because there were lives that depended on him doing so.

The feeling of that responsibility returned to Benji then, weighing on him even heavier than before. All those lives had been in his hands, slipping through his fingers slicked with blood with every passing second, needing him to succeed because his failure would mean their deaths. Benji sagged against the sink, heart heavy with the memory of fear and the shadow of guilt, the weight of all that had happened and all that could have been. His breath hitched. His chest felt so tight. He tried to force himself to breathe past the catch in his throat. All that came out was a broken sob.

There was no stopping it now, Benji knew. The floodgates had opened. He sank to the floor, letting the tears flow freely, shoulders shaking, hugging his knees. He knew he was acting like a child, but he couldn’t do anything about it. He felt more like a child than a field agent right now. He never really felt like a field agent anyway, more like he was pretending, in way over his head but acting like he knew what was going on to impress everyone around him. His silly little game had almost started a war.

Benji cried until he ran out of tears, then took a few more deep breaths before slowly standing up. He looked at himself in the mirror, contemplating his puffy red eyes. Turning his attention back to the tap he’d left running, Benji splashed cold water on his face, willing the telltale swelling to go away.

He might still feel like he was pretending, but in everyone else’s eyes, he was a field agent. He supposed he’d better try to look the part.


End file.
